Some people think that the insulin index is even more useful than the glycemic index. It makes sense to compare these two indexes, because Dr. Holt developed the insulin index while working with Dr. Jennie Brand-Miller, who has done the most work on the glycemic index.

We still don’t know why there are differences between glycemic and insulin index values and what significance they have. “Some foods (such as meat, fish and eggs) that contain no carbohydrate, just protein and fat (and essentially have a GI value of zero), still stimulate significant rises in blood insulin,” Dr. Brand-Miller wrote in her best-selling book, The New Glucose Revolution (New York: Marlowe and Company, 2003, pages 57-58). “We don’t know how to interpret this type of response (low glycemia, high insulinemia) for long-term health. It may be a good outcome because the rise in insulin has contributed to the low level of glycemia. On the other hand, it may be not-so-good, because the increased demand for insulin contributes to beta-cell ‘exhaustion’ and the development of type 2 diabetes.”
Because I would love to see work on the insulin index continue, I recently wrote Dr. Holt. She replied that she would have loved to keep working on it, “but the opportunity just isn’t there for me.”

However, she added an intriguing finding. In addition to milk, she says that chocolate also produces a higher than expected insulin response. This includes plain chocolate, chocolate bars and especially chocolate flavored protein bars and drinks. “I think this is probably due to the combination of sugar and fat (and protein for the protein bars and drinks) and the high palatability of chocolate-flavoured foods,” she wrote me.

“One of the last research studies I did was comparing the effects of two different breakfast meals on blood glucose, insulin, and incretin (GLP and GIP) responses,” she wrote. “The meal with cow’s milk in it produced large GIP and GLP-2 responses, which could be a good thing in people without any insulin resistance, as the GLP-2 is known to be involved in the satiety cascade.”

So, should we avoid milk and chocolate or eat more of it? I would hardly recommend one or the other until we learn more about the significance of the high insulin responses that they trigger. But it’s clear than the glycemic index remains as relevant as ever for determining which carbohydrate foods trigger high blood glucose levels.

This article is based on an earlier version of my article published by HealthCentral.

2 responses so far ↓

The development of diabetes is also uncertain as to whether it may be caused by the constant bombardment of increased blood glucose levels and the subsequent release of insulin and eventual decrease of insulin sensitivity and the release of insulin that is not a result of the blood glucose levels and whether this would be capable of causing a decrease in insulin sensitivity?